Annotations and suggestions on elephant proof trenches to reduce human elephant conflicts in Coimbatore forest division South India

Abstract

The structural backbone of India is agriculture. Agriculture encounters more conflicts and one among them is the human-elephant conflict. Traditional agricultural system is declining due to modernisation and urbanization and all the forest covers are being converted into human areas. Reduce forest cover and irregular rainfall and drastic climatic changes are much influencing the animals especially the elephants to enter into the human areas for food and water leading to human-elephant conflict. Though the State government and Forest department are necessary steps to trim down the elephant invading issues in Coimbatore forest division, the problem is still persisting. One best solution to calm down the upshot is the Elephant proof trench method. The present study found 510 damaged trenches by Foot survey method, analysed the effectiveness of Elephant Proof Trench (EPT) by Questionnaire method from the village people in the vicinity of forest fringes and collected all previous available conflict data from the forest department.
 Major human-elephant conflict incidences happened during March and October, high during the rainy seasons. Possibly elephants prefer to raid crops during these seasons for accessing sodium and minerals found in the crops. The present study reveals that Elephant Proof Trench reduced 73% of the elephant visits and 58% of crop damages. We also found EPT minimised the economic loss (58%), human deaths (75%) and elephant death incidences (82%) in the Coimbatore forest division. The minimum loss noted was also only because of the poorly maintained trenches. Hence, it is clear that, effectiveness of the Elephant Proof Trench will be most reliable, if trenches are maintained in a well regular manner. These results will help in the better conservation planning and management of forest ecosystem in future which will not have the human elephant conflicts again.
 Key words: Elephant proof trench, Human elephant conflict, Forest ecosystem, Agriculture